Dr Luke Isbel

Dr Luke Isbel competed his PhD in 2016 at La Trobe University, under the supervision of Professor Emma Whitelaw. Throughout his PhD studies, Luke worked primarily with mouse models of genes involved in epigenetic regulation, keenly interested in concepts like ‘gene regulation’ and ‘phenotypic buffering’. Following completion of his PhD Luke relocated to Basel, Switzerland where he held a postdoctoral position in the lab of Professor Dirk Schübeler at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research. During his postdoctoral years Luke undertook an intense research program delving deeper into these same epigenetic processes in stem cells, specializing in functional genomics and bioinformatics techniques to study molecular mechanisms at fundamental levels.

Luke will relocate to Adelaide in 2023 to set up his own lab at the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute (SAiGENCI). Luke’s vision for his research group is to bridge the fundamental and translational aspects of epigenetics using a cross-disciplinary, ‘systems’ approach. He will tackle critical gaps in our understanding of molecular events by integrating a variety of models and tools to shed light on the biology of transcription factors, cofactors and chromatin.